Don't use dog race to promote reading

This is in regard to the Jan. 7 story, "Race is on to read this winter."

Promoting reading is a laudatory goal. Nevertheless, animal lovers hope the Naperville Public Library stops conducting reading contests based upon the Iditarod dog sled race. What happens to the dogs during the Iditarod includes death, paralysis, penile frostbite, lung damage, ruptured discs, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, pneumonia, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons, sprains, torn footpads and anemia.

According to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do finish, 81 percent have lung damage. The Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine reported that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.

Iditarod veterinarians don't give dogs physical exams at every checkpoint. Mushers often breeze through the checkpoints in under five minutes, so that the dogs get brief visual checks, if that. Veterinarians, who are part of the Iditarod culture of cruelty, give the dogs massive doses of antibiotics to keep them running.

In 2007, the veterinary staff gave its Humanitarian Award to a musher who raced his dogs for four days even though all of them had diarrhea.

The dogs are sometimes sick or injured before the Iditarod begins, but the veterinarians allow them to run anyway. Dogs with diarrhea, viruses, coughs and open sores on footpads have been allowed to start the race.

The Iditarod is a sweatshop for dogs and belongs in history's garbage can.

Margery Glickman

Director, Sled Dog Action Coalition

Miami, Fla.